Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.

G. B. Trudeau, best known for his satirical comic strip “Doonesbury,” has long mocked American political and cultural rituals, including higher education’s self-importance. This quip targets the modern commencement address as a ceremonial performance that often substitutes platitudes and soothing uplift for candid engagement with the uncertainties graduates face. The line circulates widely as a stand-alone aphorism attributed to Trudeau, typically in collections of graduation-season quotations and media roundups, rather than as a clearly traceable line from a specific “Doonesbury” strip, interview, or essay. Its endurance reflects how familiar the trope of the long, soporific commencement speech has become in U.S. culture.

The joke hinges on an exaggerated metaphor: commencement speeches “sedate” graduates, dulling anxiety and critical energy at the moment they are about to confront an uncertain world. Trudeau implies that institutions prefer graduates to leave comforted and compliant rather than restless, skeptical, or politically awake. The line also plays on the irony of “commencement” (a beginning) being marked by a ritual that can feel like an ending—of spontaneity, candor, and intellectual edge—replaced by ceremonial uplift. As satire, it critiques not only speeches that are boring, but the social function of official optimism in masking complexity.